First dive with OM-1 & Canon 8-15

[Chris Ross]

Took the OM-1 plus Canon 8-15 rig for it's first dive off Sydney on the weekend a couple of deep sites about 500m offshore.  Rig is noticeably heavier than using the 12-40 plus Zen dome and I'm now running about 1.7kg of buoyancy to get it very slightly negative, previously using about 0.75 kg.  Here's some samples from the dives, First up some Giant Cuttlefish:

 

 

 

and some colourful sponge gardens

 

 

 

 

[Davide DB]

After endless debates on fisheye corners, looking at the two sponge gardens photos, corners appear absolutely perfect to me 😜

 

 

[Troporobo]

Very nice results with that combo!

[JustinO]

Nice pics, Chris! 

But the other unanswered question is whether you've yet taken the 90mm underwater?  Or does that need a conversation with your bank manager? 

Asking for a friend... 😆

[JustinO]

And if you have, assuming you are using a Nauticam port, did you get the focus ring? And can you use that with the clutch set in manual (where the full range from 2x to infinity seems to be available with 1/2 turn of the focus ring, saving a lot of time and energy twiddling forever.  Not intending to hijack the thread...

Edited April 3 by JustinO

[Davide DB]

27 minutes ago, JustinO said:

Not intending to hijack the thread...

 

We could just start a thread "Chris & the (H)oly 90mm" 😁

[Chris Ross]

5 hours ago, JustinO said:

Nice pics, Chris! 

But the other unanswered question is whether you've yet taken the 90mm underwater?  Or does that need a conversation with your bank manager? 

Asking for a friend... 😆

Thanks Justin and to answer question, no not as yet, my problem is that on local dives which is 90% of my diving I rarely shoot more 0.5x, most of the critters I manage to find are larger, even the pygmy pipehorses while small don't need that much magnification.

[Chris Ross]

11 hours ago, Davide DB said:

After endless debates on fisheye corners, looking at the two sponge gardens photos, corners appear absolutely perfect to me 😜

 

 

to be fair they are all cropped somewhat, the corners are not perfect, but there is also little of interest down there and when viewed as part of the whole frame totally not noticeable.  here is a centre and corner 100% crop from one of the images at 12mm FL, for those who would like to indulge in some pixel peeping.  Both are approx 800px wide 100% crops.

 

 

 

you can see the corners improve quite rapidly away from the extreme corners and they do look better than the little Panasonic 8mm fisheye lens.  At 8mm the corners seem slightly better.  100% crops out of most cameras of course look a little ordinary.

[humu9679]

Photos look really good Chris.

[Igor Ledo Lizarraga]

Hi @Chris Ross

 

I am shooting with the same combo OM-1 + Canon 8-15 and love the ability to zoom in a bit and image quality.

I am currently using a Metabones MFT T Smart adapter which only works with S-AF autofocus.

Do you know if there is any way to enable any of the tracking modes using another adapter? Are you also using the Metabones?

 

Cheers

[Barmaglot]

1 hour ago, Igor Ledo Lizarraga said:

I am currently using a Metabones MFT T Smart adapter which only works with S-AF autofocus.

Sounds like it is set to advanced mode. Use the Metabones utility to switch it to green mode, and you should get C-AF, but you will lose video AF entirely. 

[Chris Ross]

4 hours ago, Igor Ledo Lizarraga said:

Hi @Chris Ross

 

I am shooting with the same combo OM-1 + Canon 8-15 and love the ability to zoom in a bit and image quality.

I am currently using a Metabones MFT T Smart adapter which only works with S-AF autofocus.

Do you know if there is any way to enable any of the tracking modes using another adapter? Are you also using the Metabones?

 

Cheers

Yes I'm using the Metabones and it seems to work in C-AF, haven't tried the tracking modes though.  If I recall correctly I downgraded the firmware to get it working on a big Canon Tele lens.  AF seems quite rapid with the 8-15, haven't used it anywhere that would require any sort of tracking though.

[Ido]

Great shots. 

[Igor Ledo Lizarraga]

On 4/7/2024 at 11:56 PM, Barmaglot said:

Sounds like it is set to advanced mode. Use the Metabones utility to switch it to green mode, and you should get C-AF, but you will lose video AF entirely. 

 

Thank you! 

 

I was using firmware version 3.90 and my C-AF with the OM-1 and Canon 8-15 was constantly hunting and failing to lock focus even if not moving the camera or subject. 

 

I upgraded to the latest 4.0 firmware and then tested again, same behavior.... 

I then started looking for the 'green mode' setting as mentioned by @Barmaglot and found the below

 

 

So I turned this feature on and tested again. 

Now the C-AF does not hunt* (still does a bit but it is usable unlike I had it before). 

 

Thank you @Barmaglot and @Chris Ross for your inputs.